Jessica Chastain, Kit Harington (Game of Thrones), Natalie Portman and the so-hot-right-now Jacob Tremblay all feature in the moody first pics for The Death and Life Of John F. Donovan, Xavier Dolan’s star-studded drama that’s eyeing a debut on fall’s festival circuit.
Coming to us by way of Collider, the striking, beautifully composed images also shine the spotlight on Taylor Kitsch, Kathy Bates, Susan Sarandon, Nicholas Hoult, and Westworld‘s Thandie Newton. At the crux of John F. Donovan, though, is Kit Harington’s American TV star.
Riding high in his late 20s, Harington’s life and career are called into question amid allegations of his purported correspondence with Rupert Turner (Tremblay), an 11-year-old actor living with his mother on the other side of the pond. That saga begins in the early 2000s, though we understand The Death and Life Of John F. Donovan will flit between the past and the present day – not unlike David Fincher’s Social Network – as the court case begins to unfold.
In tandem with the reveal, Collider also asked Dolan to elaborate on the film’s mother/son relationship – a dynamic that has nigh on becoming a Xavier Dolan trope.
When editing, [during a lengthier shooting break] it became clear that the heart of this film would be the mother-son relationships. And you, know that realization didn’t bother me. I could spend the rest of my life talking about mothers and sons and still be making a completely different movie than the last.
Xavier Dolan will chronicle The Death and Life Of John F. Donovan later on in 2017. The esteemed filmmaker is yet to nail down an exact release date for the sweeping drama though, so there’s every chance it could be nudged into 2018 to lend some breathing space to its inevitable festival run.
